COUNTRY BLUES WOMEN - Vol. I

WSE 117

Country Blues Women – Vol. I

Lottie Kimbrough was born in 1900 in Kansas City, MO. She was one of Kansas City’s best known classic blues singers in 1920’s. She recorded extensively during the period under a variety of pseudonyms for a variety of labels. She started in the early 20’s singing in the city’s red light clubs and bordellos. In 1925 she recorded, using the name Lottie Beaman, her first records for Para-mount, followed by sessions for the Kansas City based Merrit Records. This label was owned by Winston Holmes, who often sang with Kimbrough. Some of Kimbroughs songs were Merrit’s best selling records. In the mid- and late 20’s Kimbrough also recorded for Gennett, using her own name. Under different other names she also recorded for Champion, Supertone and Superior.

By 1930 Kimbrough had disappeared from the Kansas City blues scene.

“I’m going to build me a mansion, out on Dago Hill (twice), where I can get whiskey right from the still,” sang Luella Miller, fantasising that she would be wealthy enough to live with the St. Louis elite. There’s not much to suggest that she achieved her ambition though, and after a few sessions she seems to have disappeared into obscurity. Unfortunately, her records have been less well known to the jazz and blues collecting public in the past than those to say, Edith Johnson or Victoria Spivey, her contemporaries, in St. Louis at the time. It has been suggested that she came from Texas, perhaps because of her moaning style. Luella Miller was never mentioned by Victoria Spivey, also a St. Louis contemporary.

Luella’s Blues are largely about her “sweet papa” and his break with her. She seems to have been an amateur rather than a professional. Luella is an ingenuous approach, the blues of an innocent in performance of not in content. In fact, as far as content is concerned her rather sombre, moaning blues are deceptive, for they are often lyrically interesting.

She has a nice turn of phrase in her stanzas; complaining that her mom had been “blind and could not see; when I quit you pretty papa, don’t sing your blues to me!”

Victoria Spivey was born in October 15, 1906 in Houston, TX. She was one of the more influential blues women simply because she was around long enough to influence legions of younger women and men who rediscovered blues music during the mid ’60s. She wrote songs, sang them well, and accompanied herself on piano and organ, and occasionally ukulele.

Spivey began her recording career at age 19 and came from the same rough-and-tumble clubs in Houston and Dallas that produced Sippie Wallace. In 1918, she left home to work as a pianist at the Lincoln Theater in Dallas. In the early ’20s, she played in gambling parlors, gay hangouts and whorehouses in Galveston and Houston with Blind Lemon Jefferson. Among Spivey’s many influences was Ida Cox, herself a sassy blues woman, and taking her cue from Cox, Spivey wrote and recorded tunes like “TB Blues”, “Dope Head Blues” and “Organ Grinder Blues” in the ’20s. Spivey’s other influences included Robert Calvin, Sara Martin and Bessie Smith. Like so many other women blues singers who had their heyday in the ’20s and ’30s. Spivey wasn’t afraid to sing sexually suggestive lyrics and this turned out to be a blessing nearly 40 years later in the sexual revolution of the ’60s and early ’70s.

She recorded her first song, “Black Snake Blues”, for the Okeh Label in 1926, and then worked as a songwriter at a music publishing company in St. Louis in the late ’20s. In the ’30s, Spivey recorded for the Victor, Vocalion, Decca and Okeh labels, and moved to New York City, working as a featured performer in a number of African-American musical revues, including the “Hellzapoppin Revue”. In the ’30s, she recorded and spent time on the road with Louis Armstrong’s various bands. Lucille Bogan was born in Amory, MS, on April 1, 1897. Bessie Jackson was a pseudonym of Lucille Bogan, a classic female blues artist from the ’20s and ’30s. Her outspoken lyrics deal with sexuality in a manner that manages to raise eyebrows even within a genre that is about as nasty as recorded music ever got prior to the emergence of artists such as 2 Live Crew or Ludacris. The name change seems to be quite different in her case than the usual pattern among blues artists who recorded under other names simply to make an end run around preexisting recording contracts. Jackson/Bogan seemed to be looking for something more substantial, in that she not only changed her name but her performance style as well, and never recorded again under the name of Lucille Bogan once the Jackson persona had emerged. This was despite having enjoyed a hit record in the so-called “race market” in 1927 with the song “Sweet Petunia” as Bogan, but perhaps this was a scent she was trying to hide from.

Lucille Bogan was born Lucille Anderson, picking up Bogan as a married name. She was the aunt of pianist and trumpet player Thomas “Big Music” Anderson. Bogan made her first recordings of the tunes “Lonesome Daddy Blues” and “Pawnshop Blues” in 1923, in New York City for the Okeh label. Despite the blues references in the titles, these were more vaudeville numbers. She moved to Chicago a year or two later and developed a huge following in the Windy City, before relocating to New York City in the early ’30s, where she began a long collaborative relationship with pianist Walter Roland.

One of the most infamous of the Jackson sides is the song “B. D. Woman’s Blues”. “B. D.” was short for “bull dykes”, after all, and the blues singer lays it right on the line with the opening verse: “Comin’ a time/woman ain’t gonna need no men”. Well, except for a good piano player such as Walter Roland or some of her other hotshot accompanists such as guitarists Tampa Red and Josh White, or banjo picker Papa Charlie Jackson. She herself gets an accordion credit on one early recording, quite unusual for this genre. Certainly one of Bogan’s greatest talents was as a songwriter, and she copyrighted dozens of titles, many of them so original that other blues artists were forced to give credit where credit was due instead of whipping up “matcher” imitations as was more than the norm.

The daughter of a Baptist deacon, Sippie Wallace (born Beulah Thomas) was born and raised in Houston. She was a classic female blues singer from the ’20s. Wallace kept performing and recording until her death. As a child, she sang and played piano in church. Before she was in her teens, she began performing with her pianist brother Hersal Thomas. By the time she was in her mid-teens, she had left Houston to pursue a musical career, singing in a number of tent shows and earning a dedicated fan base. In 1915, she moved to New Orleans with Hersal. Two years later, she married Matt Wallace.

In 1925, Sippie, Hersal, and their older brother George moved to Chicago, where Sippie became part of the city’s jazz scene. By the end of the year, she had earned a contract with Okeh Records. Her first two songs for the label “Shorty George” and “Up the Country Blues”, were hits and Sippie soon became a star. Throughout the ’20s she produced a series of singles that were nearly all hits. In addition, between 1923 and 1927 she recorded over 40 songs for Okeh. Many of the songs that were Wallace originals or co-written by Sippie and her brothers.

In 1926, Hersal Thomas died of food poisoning, but Sippie Wallace continued to perform and record. Within a few years, however, she stopped performing regularly. After her contract with Okeh was finished in the late ’20s, she moved to Detroit in 1929. In the early ’30s, Wallace stopped recording, only performing the occasional gig. In 1936 both George Thomas and her husband Matt died. Following their deaths, Sippie joined the Leland Baptist Church in Detroit, where she was an organist and vocalist: she stayed with the church for the next 40 years.

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